A good book for college students…

…especially Christians attending secular schools: Ask Me Anything: Provocative Answers for College Students by J. Budziszewski.

A while back I read Budziszewski’s What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide, I think on the recommendation of my sister (who incidentally is friends with Budziszewski’s daughter). Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think Theresa recommended it, because I recall the conversation we had when I told her I was reading it and recommended it to her and she then told me that oh yeah, he’s Boogie’s dad. Anyway, i can’t recall how the book ended up in my hands, but it was a great read.

So when another Budziszewski book popped up in my Amazon recommends, I clicked on it. And then requested it from the library.

Even though this book is aimed at college students, I found it an interesting read. It’s basically reprints of some of Budziszewski’s online advice columns, written under the name Professor Theophilus. It bounces back and forth between longer articles that read like modern day Socratic dialogues between Prof T and his students (either in his office or in local dining establishments) and his responses to letters written in response to these articles. The subject matter in the first section is “girl and guy stuff”, in the second “faith on campus stuff” and in the third “hot stuff,” i.e. issues like just war and homosexuality. (This last section gets a bit graphic in parts and might not be suitable for all readers; but let’s face it if you’re attending a big secular school you are probably going to encounter much more frank discussions of the topic.)

The funny thing about this book is it turns out to have been an answer to a prayer. Not mine precisely, but my sister’s. My sister needed some guidance recently about “girl and guy stuff.” She called the day after I finished the book, I was planning to mention it the next time we talked, and laid out this question to me. I started laughing because there was one passage that I just had to read to her because it addressed her concerns so perfectly. And it turns out that she had recently been bombarded by all sorts of emails from friends with other stuff which was quite relevant on the subject.

Turns out she’d been praying about it but it was one of those instances where she was convinced God couldn’t be saying what he was saying so she just kept praying harder for an answer. Sometimes it seems we need a 2X4 from heaven!

Well that explains why I ended up reading this fun little book. It was really meant as a message to my sister. Always glad to be a messanger.

I think this book was written while Budziszewski was in the process of converting. Originally an athiest, he later became Christian and is now Catholic. This book is addressed generically to Chrisitans and could be read by both Protestants and Catholics.